Pictured: Mayor Eddie De la Riva is in a tough spot and he knows it.
<<BREAKING NEWS>> — Apparently there’s nothing but trash talk happening in Maywood these days. As sources confirm, last year the Maywood City Council canceled it’s waste management contract with Republic Services after the city conducted an audit and discovered that Republic Services had completely failed to pay the city of Maywood over $5 million in franchise fees and other monies cashed in by the trash collector from Maywood residents.
Consequentially, the Council was forced to put the contract out to bid and eventually selected Commercial Waste Services to take over trash collection. Upon review, Commercial Waste Services was chosen after being the only company that not only was willing to provide trash services at the same price as Republic Services but also committed to provide new trash carts and bins to the whole city in a stated “matter of days.”
However, Commercial Waste Services never fully complied with their agreed contract as they maintained a shortage of bins and carts for months, while also failing to deliver on the promise to buy new service trucks. The embarrassing failure of the company’s transition and the constant sight of hundreds of trash receptacles overflowing with uncollected trash, throwing the entire city into a messy disarray, fueled the election of a new majority to the Maywood City Council in November of 2018.
Pictured: Enter Mayor De la Riva – on his off time not fixing the city’s massive waste management problem.
One of the promises made by that new majority and its leader, Mayor Eddie De la Riva, was to fix the trash problem. Unfortunately, that seems like too hard a promise to fulfill as the trash service went from seemingly bad to even worse under the leadership of the new Mayor. While the trash service in Maywood reached disastrous proportions, Mayor De la Riva and his new majority seemed more focused on catering to their friends in organized labor than delivering on their critical campaign promises. In a shocking move, Mayor De La Riva and his majority in the city council voted to actually forgive the millions in dollars of debt that a judge ordered Republic Services to pay to the city of Maywood, amounting to a crushing financial responsibility not secured for Maywood residents.
Let’s jump to today – Mayor De la Riva and the Maywood City Council seem to have taken a step in the right direction and are holding a public hearing to discuss canceling the contract with Commercial Waste Services for “material breach.” However, sources close to this process are saying that Mayor De la Riva and his majority in the city council have already decided to allow Commercial Waste Services to “transfer-sale” their current trash contract to another company. According to sources, the company that Mayor De la Riva wants to bring to Maywood is Waste Resources. Waste Resources is the current trash hauler in Lynwood and Carson. Break open that new tab browser tab, folks, because a simple Google search of Kosti Shirvanian, the company’s owner, should give the Maywood City Council an idea of what type of company they are bringing to their city. Hint: not a good choice.
All in all, Maywood residents would be better served if Mayor De la Riva and the rest of the City Council get serious about their promises of more transparency and better governance. They need to make the difficult decisions they were elected to make on behalf of the residents of Maywood. They need to replace their current trash hauler with any company who actually has the capacity and resources to do the job and do it well. They need to put their differences aside and leave politics out of this decision and prioritize basic public service. This is too important, and too hygienic, of a decision to let be tainted by political squabbles. Residents deserve and need an excellent company to finally do the job that was originally promised and they need to pay for it. Sometimes basic life truths are the best: remember, you get what you pay for.
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